Some viewers asked for a video on learning from lectures. So I finally made one.

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00:00 Starting with a question
00:53 Lectures and learning
2:10 On the popularity of the lecture format
2:56 Preparing for a lecture
4:38 Making the most of reading assignments
6:33 The goals of preparation: cognitive load
7:37 Create relevant prior knowledge
8:10 Get relevant practical experience
8:29 Begin the organizational process
9:06 Going to the lecture
10:54 Good attention
11:47 Attention drops during lecture
12:29 Dealing with online lectures
13:37 Reviewing after the lecture
14:42 Creative ways of reviewing
16:20 Fundamentals are key
17:26 Frameworks to help you review
19:50 Review vs doing homework
21:38 A little goes a long way

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The scrolling text when I was talking about cognitive load comes from an excerpt from an old Vanity Fair magazine, written by P.G. Wodehouse, available here: https://www.vanityfair.com/culture/20....

The green screen Youtube video (talking about stopping at 10 minutes, 30 minutes) came from here:    • Green Screen  1 hour 1080p  

I used an example lecture from Scott Page’s Model Thinking on Coursera, found here. The specific excerpt, was taken from the first lecture on aggregation. https://www.coursera.org/lecture/mode.... I definitely recommend Scott Page’s work, especially if you’re interested in social science and social dynamics.

The "taking a test" example came from an MIT course on differential equations: https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/1803dif....

REFERENCES

On attention during lectures. The basic takeaway is that passive learning during lectures is similar to a vigilance task (asking people to monitor for low frequency signals from a background of noise radar monitoring for instance). 1030 minutes in, steep attention decrements.

Young, M. S., Robinson, S., & Alberts, P. (2009). Students pay attention!: Combating the vigilance decrement to improve learning during lectures. Active Learning in Higher Education, 10(1), 41–55. https://doi.org/10.1177/1469787408100194

If you are a teacher looking to improve student learning during lectures, this piece from almost 40 years ago still holds up. If you’re a science teacher at the undergraduate level, I recommend visiting the Carl Wieman Science Education Initiative.

Gibbs, G., Habeshaw, S., & Habeshaw, T. (1987). Improving Student Learning During Lectures. Medical Teacher, 9(1), 11–20. https://doi.org/10.3109/0142159870902...

This is a more modern piece covering some of the same ground:

Cerbin, W. (2018). Improving student learning from lectures. Scholarship of Teaching and Learning in Psychology, 4(3), 151–163. https://doi.org/10.1037/stl0000113